web2

Time to hit reload on Web 2.0 Expo?

SAN FRANCISCO--The Web 2.0 Expo this week was missing something. It might've been Tim O'Reilly, the founder of conference co-producer O'Reilly Media and a well-regarded, if slightly granola-inclined, industry sage. He was out of town; gone from the program was his traditional opening keynote, a quick but poignant take on the state of the industry.

Or it might have been the hype missing from the rather quiet halls of the Moscone Convention Center. A few years ago, it was a must-attend event for industry insiders and a launch pad for new start-ups looking to get onto … Read more

Google, eBay execs make mobile commerce pitches

SAN FRANCISCO--There will be quite the land grab ahead as mobile trends continue to make their way into the e-commerce world. Or at least that's what it seems based on two short talks at this week's Web 2.0 Expo about the future of commerce, one yesterday afternoon from Google vice president of payments Osama Bedier, and one this morning from eBay vice president of global product management Dane Glasgow.

"Shoppers don't distinguish between online and mobile. They think of mobile as an extension of their everyday activities," Glasgow said. "Mobile's clearly having … Read more

Network, don't fail me now!

Everything in IT depends on the network.--and not just in an abstract, "need it occasionally" sort of way. The packets must flow for virtually every operation, every job, every transaction. Whenever packets drop, or links go down, we're disconnected and isolated. Information doesn't flow; apps don't work; users don't proceed. We need the network up and running, millisecond by millisecond, every millisecond of every day.

Our utter, urgent dependency won't lessen in the coming years. It will intensify--redoubling and redoubling again. Cisco calls its vision of the future "together." HP … Read more

Online word processors: Awesome and primitive

I love that you can now write full, rich, graphical applications for the Web--even for core tools like word processors. As Stephen Shankland recently noted, Google Docs has evolved into something surprisingly useful, even for a professional writer. I second that opinion, and add that competitors like Zoho Writer are similarly powerful, usable, and useful--as are other "Office 2.0" apps for spreadsheets, presentations, project management, and other tasks. Cloud apps have come a long way, baby!

Online editors let you move your work easily to just about any connected computer, and they enormously facilitate live, real-time collaboration. … Read more

Thin client computing grows up

I've been following the evolution of client-side computing off and on for over 20 years. Remember ASCII terminals? Green screens? Beehives? X terminals? If you do, they're most likely dimming memories.

The history of client side computing is filled with efforts to shift the balance of power between the server (ne host) and the client device. Which side is responsible for what, and how the sides communicate with each other, determine the cost, control, security, flexibility, and richness of the result. Some years it's "do everything meaningful on the server." Others, "do most work … Read more

Competitive unease hovers over Web 2.0

SAN FRANCISCO--There was an uneasiness in the air this week at the stately Palace Hotel during the eighth annual Web 2.0 Summit, the sort of vibe that you couldn't see in the glossy program or in the lineup of events that included talks by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski, and big-ticket investors like John Doerr and Fred Wilson. People weren't talking about it, for the most part, but you could see it. You could hear it sometimes, too, if you knew what to listen for.

"We're … Read more

Twitter co-founder riffs on Facebook, developers

SAN FRANCISCO--Twitter co-founder Evan Williams was

the final speaker of the Web 2.0 Summit conference on Wednesday, with a slew of potential announcements anticipated like perhaps a massive new funding round or a formal roll out of the "analytics dashboard" product that it's had in the works for some time.

Not quite that exciting. Williams' only comment on the funding rumors was "we have a lot of money in the bank," and with regard to the supposed dashboard announcement, he said casually that an "analytics dashboard-y thing" was being used by "… Read more

Netflix CEO: iPad affects us 'very little'

SAN FRANCISCO--The iPad and other tablets might be the future for a lot of media, but Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said in a panel discussion at the Web 2.0 Summit this afternoon that the tablet craze affects his company's strategy "very little."

"People prefer large screens," Hastings said. "So the impact of Xbox, PS3, the Wii phenomenon--huge impact. The impact of the iPad--it's a great system, but the Mac laptops outstrip the iPad for Netflix viewing by a huge factor." Long-form video viewing does not translate that well to mobile platforms, … Read more

Zuckerberg: We don't have the answers yet

SAN FRANCISCO--Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg painted a benign portrait of his company in a talk this afternoon at the Web 2.0 Summit, countering both the concerns about how it handles users' personal information as well as its increasing power to muscle out other companies in an apparent quest to dominate the Web.

"I'm not sure we're 100 percent right on this," Zuckerberg said of Facebook's recent spat with Google in which the latter forbade Facebook users from importing their Gmail contact information because Facebook doesn't let them do the reverse. "The correct … Read more

Bartz: Google is great, Facebook is competition

SAN FRANCISCO--The first word that comes to Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz's mind when she hears the word "Facebook" is "competition," she revealed onstage at the Web 2.0 Summit this afternoon when conference host John Battelle engaged her in a lightning round of word associations. Google, meanwhile, prompted a response of "great company."

How times do change. Just a few years before she arrived at Yahoo, the company was offering Facebook $1 billion for an outright sale. Facebook turned it down; the seemingly unstoppable social network is rumored to be valued at over $… Read more